LONG BEACH — Ask City Attorney Robert Shannon why he’s retiring this summer, and he’ll first tell you it’s time to move on to other things.

Dig a little deeper – who do you want the City Council to appoint as your successor? – and you’ll get closer to who Shannon is, as he quickly answers with the name of his longtime assistant, Charles Parkin.

Be blunt on the topic of his early retirement – are you bowing out a year before your term ends to give Parkin a leg up in the election? – and classic Shannon surfaces, surprisingly straightforward, without a hint of the guile found in many other politicians.

“Yes,” Shannon says without hesitation. “That is absolutely a part of it.”

During an hour long interview this week in his City Hall office, Shannon candidly talked about his upcoming retirement on July 3 and the 39 years he has spent in the City Attorney’s office, a span covering a third of Long Beach’s history.

In the top job alone, by his count, he has advised 29 city council members, two mayors, four city managers and six police chiefs.

Shannon has never aspired to another political office, as have, as he points out, elected head lawyers in cities such as Los Angeles.

“To me, that diminishes the important job the city attorney does,” said Shannon. “People are best served by a lawyer who wants to serve the citizens and isn’t looking for the next job.”

The litigator

Shannon can be pugnacious. The arrows in his legal quiver make no distinction between those on the city council and members of the public engaging in layman lawyering during public comment sessions.

That’s in part, Shannon said, because of his background as a litigator.

He was a deputy in the Los Angeles City Attorney’s office from 1970-74, working 300 cases in state and federal court, before taking a job in 1974 as a senior deputy in the Long Beach City Attorney’s office. He defended the city against lawsuits before becoming former City Attorney John Calhoun’s assistant in 1985.

To Shannon, the law is a clear arbiter, not something to transmute into what one desires it to be.

“I’ve always wanted to work my way around to saying in public that this is a government of laws,” Shannon said.

“We don’t have the right to wink at some laws and obey others because that creates a slippery slope.”

Medical marijuana

That viewpoint has been most prominently displayed in recent years in the city’s struggle to regulate medical marijuana.

Long Beach first passed regulations to allow a limited number of pot collectives in 2010. The following year, an appeals court struck the law down, ruling that it conflicted with federal law.

Since then, Shannon has argued strongly against attempts to allow collectives of more than three people.

Former City Councilwoman Rae Gabelich was the sole dissenting vote when the council voted to ban collectives using zoning codes last year. The ban has since been upheld by another case the California Supreme Court decided this month.

“He was accurate in that regard, but is that the way we wanted to take it?” Gabelich asked.

She said that many of her colleagues expressed support for medicinal marijuana, but claimed they grew weary of courting controversy and were swayed by the relentlessness of Shannon’s arguments.

“I don’t believe that you stop talking about something just because you’re tired of talking about it,” Gabelich said.

“I believe you continue until you find the compromise that works for everybody.”

A record of success

Even Gabelich, though, generally gives Shannon high marks as the city’s chief attorney.

Before her political career, Gabelich was part of a movement that fought for noise and flight restrictions at Long Beach Airport.

“He was always respectful of that movement,” said Gabelich. “I always appreciated how he was able to separate the law from how he personally felt about things.”

Under Shannon, the City Attorney’s Office has won 80 percent of trials by jury.

Some of the highlights in his tenure include a lawsuit that won $18 million from energy companies responsible for the unlawful spike in natural gas prices last decade, a 1998 action that closed hotels allowing criminal activities, a suit that controlled the number of flights at Long Beach Airport and the successful defense of a campaign ordinance that limited donations from political parties. That decision has been overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Citizens United case, which allows unlimited independent expenditures.

There have also been dark moments, like when a jury found last month that Long Beach police officers violated the civil rights of Douglas Zerby, 35, who was holding a pistol-grip hose nozzle when officers shot him to death without warning in 2010. Zerby’s family was awarded $6.5 million in damages.

Shannon could not fully discuss the case because the city is still deciding whether it will appeal the judgment, but said he did not regret defending the case.

“We had some state-of-the-art re-creations that absolutely convinced me that the actions of the officers were appropriate under the emerging circumstances they were acting under,” said Shannon.

If the city had offered a substantial settlement, according to Shannon, it would send a message to the police department that officers would not be defended even though they acted in a manner consistent with their training.

Unless there is evidence to the contrary, “You have to support your police officers,” Shannon said.

“Because otherwise they’re not going to be out there aggressively enforcing the law and therefore they will not be serving in the best interests of the citizens.”

Sticking around

Shannon said he’s not going to “ride off into the sunset.”

First up is campaigning for Parkin as his replacement, as Calhoun did for him when he stepped aside as city attorney 15 years ago.

“I’ll be around,” said Shannon. “How active I am at any given time will depend on how I feel.”

Long Beach City College Trustee Doug Otto, a prominent local attorney, praised Shannon for being able to juggle the different areas of law a municipal lawyer must attend to compared to a typical lawyer.

Shannon’s handling of a bewildering array of city legal matters, in addition to separate port and water departments, has led Otto to nominate Shannon for attorney of the year in Long Beach several times.

“He has a good sense of politics, and there’s a changing cast of characters. You have to have a very steadying influence,” said Otto.

“He’s had a distinguished career here, and we’re sorry to see him go.”

Before he does, Shannon has a few more council meetings to dispense his legal advice – and perhaps express that well-known frustration he says comes when he encounters a politician who refuses to say what he or she means.

“At a certain point, you say, you know, I’d just like it to be said the way you mean it, rather than the way you want it to be played in Peoria,” Shannon said.

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